


By the River

by GriegPlants



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Backstory, Bittersweet, F/F, F/M, Friendship/Love, Nature, Romantic Friendship, Some eerie/dark elements but they're mostly implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22608535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GriegPlants/pseuds/GriegPlants
Summary: A traveller in the Old Forest has an unexpected, but fortuitous, encounter.
Relationships: Goldberry/Lady of the Blue Brooch, Tom Bombadil/Goldberry
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	By the River

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Solanaceae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solanaceae/gifts).



> Happy Chocolate Box day!

Cold bit at her feet as she staggered through the snow-covered wood. Her woollen slippers had failed long ago and many miles to the north-east. The wolves’ howling faded at her back, but she did not dare to slow, branches whipping at her face as she fled.

A furrow in the earth, hidden by the early morning’s faint light and the white cloak of the snow, caught at her as she ran. She fell to the side, rolling down a steep bank through cutting thorns and coming to rest in the shallows of an icy stream.

Ar-Andúnê lay gasping for breath as shards of ice, shattered by her fall, floated on the bubbling current around her. She could not hear the wolves now, but her ankle throbbed in pain, and even if she could bear to rise, the freezing stream had soaked her tattered dress. With no shelter for miles and the forest too damp for any hope of a fire, she would die of the cold before much time passed.

The pain of her twisted limb and her fear both ebbed as the cold water began to numb her body and mind. She gazed up at the pale morning sky between the naked branches of the trees and felt herself fading into sleep. Her eyes closed, and the stream around her felt almost warm, caressing her hands as they floated limply in the current.

She opened her eyes some moments later, confused and suddenly waking from her doze. The stream had grown warmer in truth, ice melting into the swift-flowing ripples. Ar-Andúnê sat up, watching in bewilderment as a warm mist rose around her and further down the current. A laugh like the bright dance of water among the stones of a brook sounded from behind her, and she turned to behold a figure unlike any she had seen before.

In a pool a short way from where Ar-Andúnê had fallen stood a tall lady in a white gown, a belt of silver snowflakes and pale jewels glinting at her waist. Her hair was golden, and though the pool about her feet was ringed with melting ice, she wore no shoes and her arms were bare. The woman stepped lightly down the stream and offered her hand to Ar-Andúnê, who took it and rose with a little difficulty.

‘Coirë is no time for bathing in the Withywindle,’ said the golden-haired lady, ‘at least if you are a stranger to this wood.’

‘Who are you to be so familiar as to command its waters to warm?’ asked Ar-Andúnê in wonder.

The lady smiled. ‘My name is Goldberry, daughter of the River-woman. The Withywindle is my dear companion, and I need make no command for it to know my wish and cast away its icy blanket. Who are you to trip into its banks, and what brings you running through the forest in the dim morning time?’

‘My name is Ar-Andúnê. I was travelling by the edge of the forest when wolves saw me and chased me into its trees.’

‘You have come a long way into the wood. It has been a long and hungry winter, and the wolves grow desperate. But come! You are hurt and the morning is still very cold. I will take you to my house, and there you can break your fast with me and merry Tom.’

Goldberry took Ar-Andúnê by the arm and pulled her out from the valley carved by the Withywindle’s course. Slowly they walked among the leafless trees with the stream winding beside them until suddenly a great open hill rose before them. The Withywindle leapt down it in foaming waterfalls, and far up the slope, a house with a thatched roof stood framed against the morning sun’s chilly light.

Helping Ar-Andúnê climb the steep knoll, Goldberry called out in a clear voice. The door of the house opened, and a path of golden light fell upon the snow. Past the threshold lay a low hall lit by yellow candles and the morning sun streaming through the windows. Ar-Andúnê turned as the door swung shut behind them and saw a short man with wild hair and a blue jacket standing there smiling.

‘Hey! Here’s my pretty lady now, back from Withywindle. But who is this she brings along, paler than the snowfield? You look worn and tired!’

‘A traveller in the woods, set upon by wolves,’ said Ar-Andúnê. ‘Goldberry found me lying in the stream and kindly brought me here. You must be Tom; my name is Ar-Andúnê.’

‘Tom Bombadil I am, and glad I am to greet you. Come sit by the fireside, for we have bread and honey, and tales to ease your hurting. And perhaps you have a tale of your own to tell.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Ar-Andúnê, but a shadow passed over her face.

‘She has been running all night, and rest must come before talk,’ said Goldberry. She kissed Tom upon the cheek, and he laughed.

‘So it must! But Tom’s off to look for spring-buds on the willows. He’ll bring a crown of willow-wands back to please his lady.’

He went to a chair by the fire, where Ar-Andúnê saw a pair of green woollen socks lying to warm. Pulling them on, he thrust his feet into two great yellow boots that sat beside the door. Then, kissing Goldberry and placing a hat atop his head, he sprang out the door and away over the snow. His singing echoed back to them as he disappeared into the trees, and while it was mostly nonsense Ar-Andúnê found her heart was lifted.

Goldberry led her to the fireside and then went away into another part of the house. When she returned, she bore a wooden plate filled with more food than Ar-Andúnê thought she could eat in a month, and a copper kettle which she hung over the fire. A scent rose from it of crushed pine needles.

‘Thank you for your hospitality,’ Ar-Andúnê said, sinking back in the soft chair and feeling the ache of the cold fade away for the first time in weeks. Goldberry sat across from her, lifting a basin from near the hearth and setting it by the foot of her chair. White lilies floated there in clear water, bobbing gently against the sides.

‘I am pleased to give it,’ the golden-haired lady said, smiling. ‘It will be a while yet before the snow melts, and see – these are the last of autumn’s lilies. A guest will keep us entertained until the flowers bloom again.’

* * *

Ar-Andúnê stayed in the house of Goldberry and Tom Bombadil well after the winter had gone. Her hosts seemed glad to have her, and when her wounds and weariness had healed she helped them tend their garden and gather roots and herbs in the wood. They did not ask her why she had been wandering alone in the winter, and she could not yet bring herself to speak of it.

Goldberry made her a gown of soft wool to replace her tattered garb, and Tom brought her sturdy boots for tramping about the forest, although they were brown and not yellow like his own enormous ones. All that was good of her own possessions was the blue brooch she had worn upon her shoulder. Now she used it to clasp a warm cloak about her, for though snow no longer lay upon the branches the valley of the Withywindle was always cool and damp.

Summer came, and Goldberry showed Ar-Andúnê where the deer hid their fawns in the forest, and where the sweetest berries grew. Often they would walk together by the river, and the strange, golden-haired lady would speak of times long past as if they had happened yesterday, remembering when the great hoary willows which bent over the clear water had been tiny saplings. Ar-Andúnê wondered at the age of her hosts, but when she asked Goldberry how long she had lived in the wood, her friend seemed not to understand her meaning.

There were places where Goldberry said Ar-Andúnê should not wander alone, dim valleys where mist ever lingered and the trees were dark and strange. Sometimes Goldberry would speak about these places as if they had their own will, unfriendly and dangerous, and Ar-Andúnê recalled stories she had heard of forests to the south where trees walked and spoke like Men. Then Goldberry told her of a time when such creatures had passed through the wood, speaking to the trees and waking them up, before travelling on in search of green lands where they could make their own gardens.

One day, when summer was fading and the cool winds of autumn were beginning to whisper through the leaves, Goldberry and Ar-Andúnê went down to the Withywindle to bathe. Goldberry was telling a story, about a tree that had been shattered by lightning only for the broken branches to take root, while she washed Ar-Andúnê’s hair. The sun was shining, and the waters of the Withywindle were strewn with white and golden lilies.

Goldberry finished her tale, and they were quiet for a time in each other’s company. As the sunlight glinted on the ripples in the pool, slowly Ar-Andúnê began to tell a story of her own.

She spoke of when she had been a queen in a land across the mountains, and of the king she had loved and who had loved her also. He had been proud and noble and generous, and even as the world around them grew troubled they had reigned in peace, and their realm had prospered.

Then one day a strange and wild mood had come upon the king. He had taken to hiding away in dark rooms in the depths of their castle, and after a time he had told Ar-Andúnê of a plan he had, to go north and west and there found a new kingdom. He had not made clear why this should be so, only spoken vaguely of spreading their peaceful rule to other lands, but she had often longed to travel, and for that reason and love of him she went with him into the north with a host of their people.

It had been cold in the place to which they travelled. Snow and ice ever covered the stony ground, and crops failed more often than they grew. Ar-Andúnê had ordered a great wooden hall built with high windows and a long hearth, but a floor of earth, and within it had tended a garden. Though it did not flourish, it yielded far more than did the fields outside. Yet Ar-Andúnê was ill at ease, for when she told the king of this he scarcely listened to her words. He seemed to care little for the fate of their people, when in times past it had been the chiefest concern of them both.

Often the king would ride out alone into the cold mountains and return with his horse covered in sweat and froth. He would not speak of what he did then. In the stone below the castle they had built he carved deep wells and dark places where no other was suffered to go, and he would spend days upon days therein, doors closed and barred even against his queen.

As the year drew on towards winter, the cold land grew colder still, and many of those who had come from the south died, yet the new kingdom grew. Men from further north even than the icy castle came to live amongst them, strange men with pale eyes who spoke little but watched the king with a reverence Ar-Andúnê did not understand. They paid her little notice and showed no sorrow when the southerners starved and froze in the silent cold, or vanished without trace among the harsh crags of the mountains.

One night Ar-Andúnê had woken from a restless sleep to find the king, who had lain beside her at the close of day, gone from the bed. Clasping a cloak about her shoulders and sliding her feet into thick slippers she had walked the cold, echoing halls in search of him.

In a room far below the floor of the castle she had found him. He stood by the side of a well, his upraised hand adorned with a ring she had not seen before which shone with a pale light. He was whispering in a tongue she did not know, and things crawled to him out of the dark water – dreadful shapes of bone draped in shreds of slimy flesh, wet voices crying out hoarsely as the king drew them from the well. By the walls of the room lay the bodies of many people who had travelled with them from the south, pale and bloodless, their empty eyes gazing up at nothing.

She had fled, then, a hand over her mouth muffling her gasping breath. Her mind was foggy, as if a shadow had been cast across it and seeped inside, slowing every thought and leaving space for fear alone. By the time she came back to herself, she was far from the castle in the cold hills, wandering lost among stony crags.

A grim haze hung in the sky to the east, and when the sun shone from that way she could never tell quite where it was. It only came clear as it began to sink in the west, and she followed the sunset day after day, moving south also when she was able, until she came out of the hills and to an open road.

Following it south and west again, she avoided being seen by any travellers who crossed her path. Whenever she saw a figure in the distance she would rejoice at the chance for aid, but as the stranger drew closer a shapeless terror would grow in her mind, until she was certain the other was an agent of the king sent to find her and drag her back to the dark under the castle, where she would be cast into the well to rot until she became one of the things that had crept from it at the king’s urging. So she would hide away in the brush at the side of the road, tearing her already-worn cloak and shivering in the growing cold, until she was alone once again. Then the terror would fade, and she would not understand why it had come at all.

She had come to a crossroads and taken the road west. Although the land whence she had come lay, she knew, to the south-east, there was a town to the south which sparked in her the same fear as did the figures on the road. And to the east... She would not go to the east.

It was along this road that she encountered the wolves which had chased her into the forest of the Withywindle. Freezing and worn beyond measure by her long, lonely journey, she had stumbled into the river and there had met Goldberry.

She wondered now if she would have felt that same sourceless terror upon seeing the golden-haired lady had she not been so exhausted and close to death. It did not matter. In Goldberry she had found both a friend and an end to her lonely flight.

Ar-Andúnê fell silent, but it was a light silence without the weight of fear or grief. Goldberry reached out and Ar-Andúnê embraced her in return. They stayed together in the pool until the sun began to sink below the treetops, and then Ar-Andúnê rose to return home, taking Goldberry’s hand and leaving her cares forgotten among the lilies.

* * *

A few weeks after that day Ar-Andúnê went out among the barrows of Tyrn Gorthad near the house of Goldberry and Tom Bombadil. She walked between the silent mounds and thought of the ones who lay beneath, long dead, and of others far away who were dead in another way. When the chill of evening fell onto the downs, she went to the mound furthest to the east and knelt in the dewy grass. Unclasping her cloak, she kissed her blue brooch and laid it on the side of the mound. Then she rose and went back to the house.

The next morning, Ar-Andúnê told Goldberry that she was leaving. The golden-haired lady did not seem surprised or sad. She lit a fire in the hearth and sang a song about a wandering breeze as the sun rose above the horizon; before it climbed high enough to light the western side of the hill, Tom appeared and joined her, and they sang and danced about each other as they brought food and drink for their guest.

After they had eaten once more around the wooden table, basins of lilies at their feet and the sunlight shining bright through the window, Tom brought supplies for Ar-Andúnê loaded in a sturdy pack. Goldberry wrapped a new, warm cloak about her shoulders and clasped it with a silver pin like a lily with a green gem at its heart. She kissed Ar-Andúnê on the brow, and so they parted.

In the years after, Ar-Andúnê would sometimes return to the house to see her friends and walk with Goldberry in the wood. Yet while the two who dwelt there were ever the same, Ar-Andúnê changed with the slow march of time like all mortals. She came less and less often, and at last she did not come to the house at all.

Goldberry did not count the passage of years, for they had little meaning to her. Yet she knew, eventually, that Ar-Andúnê was not going to return.

It was winter, and she walked by the banks of the stream until she came to the place where they had first met. There she sat for some time, not singing or dancing, gazing into the cold water.

When at last she rose and left, the river was unchanged. Yet when the spring came again the lilies in the pool by that place grew thicker and brighter than anywhere else in the Withywindle, and so it was always after that day.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for your wonderful requests! I liked so many of them it was difficult to pick one.
> 
> This story was a lot of fun to write - I'd forgotten how much I enjoy this type of writing style. It was also very interesting to imagine who the Lady of the Blue Brooch might have been, and work on some details about Angmar and other things left partly unexplored in Tolkien's writing.
> 
> The femslash in here is not very well-defined, but as Goldberry is an ancient river-spirit of some sort I didn't think a conventional romance would fit. However ambiguous their relationship, it must have meant quite a lot to Goldberry, since she remembered Ar-Andúnê with fondness some 1,700 years later.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this and have an excellent day!


End file.
